Palm

While Apple is claiming to be the number one provider of wireless devices, this chart show a different story. Apple might have 49.5% of the mobile internet traffic in the U.S., it only has 12% of the world wide smart phone market.

I gone and done it, I’ve committed to a pre-order for a Nokia N900 from Amazon so sometime in the next X Days I’ll be on the Maemo 5 bandwagon. After pondering Android, Vodafone 360, Palm WebOS and Maemo, I had to choose a platform based upon HOW I USE a phone rather than as a Carrier would have me use one. It’s the one phone that most mimics my current use, a Palm T/X with a tethered Nokia 6300. Since Vodafone has killed my tethering of the Nokia, I’m reduced to using the T/X WiFi only, and there is a dearth of free WiFi sites in Ireland. Given that the Blazer browser in the T/X is functionally obsolete pointed me at a ‘Full’ OS device like Maemo. And while I can, and have booted Angstrom on the Palm, it’s inability to connect WiFi and Bluethooth make that configuration interesting, but useless. Android, and particularly the Hero was especially appealing, and was my second choice. But Android appears more like a ‘Widget marketing’ platform where only the underlying core was open source. Maemo is a full fledged Linux, although not mainstream, I can hack Linux. And while the current lack of Java is curious and worrying I do know, and it has, other programming language support, even MySQL (older version).

So what is the N900, it’s a portable Linux system, with a phone app in it. more or less what I have already. I understand that! Now all I have to do is be patient until my new toy ships. Here’s hoping is ships early. 🙂

I will miss the Palm T/X, but it’s already been repurposed as a Internet radio on it’s desk stand in my office. The Nokia 6300 will also be missed, I wonder if the wife will let me keep it around as a standby?

Looks like Google has showed their true Android colors as Google has just slapped Cyanogen with a cease-and-desist letter By demonstrating that Android is really NOT Open Source it makes my decision a bit easier. Palm Pre (WebOS), or Nokia N900 (Maemo). Of the two, only Maemo is still considered Open Source, however Palm WebOS has never pretended to be Open Source either. Android always had the feel of Google Lock-in functionality with the real intention to permanently lock the Android platform into Google. And this Cease-and-Desist is the final straw. More here!

If this isn’t the most Idiotic Marketing move Palm has ever made, I can’t see how thay could top it. To begin Marketing a second Web-OS phone that is called the Mini-Pre BEFORE THEY HAVE EVEN SOLD A SINGLE ‘PRE’ If there was ever a way to cripple the potential sales surge normally associated with the release of a new Phone, this would be it! Release information about a newer, cheaper version! What were they thinking? Now the ‘Pre’ sales are stunted, as all the people who might have been willing to stretch their wallets in a recession to buy a slick new phone, will now wait for the cheaper model to arrive.

So if you want it, go get it now. I did, and it works great. I did this to protest Palm’s move to block their own customers from enjoying the WebOS look and feel. Even in the face of Apple’s threat of legal action against WebOS, they struck first against a Palm Developer that has been supporting them for years.

Bad Play! Palm

PS: Don’t forget to download the more current Beta of TealOS 1.48 Beta here

I may be a bit wishful after seeing the demonstration of the Palm Pre but knowing that you can get Angstrom Linux on the Palm T/X, there isn’t any reason that you couldn’t get the Palm WebOS shoehorned into it. But I’m assuming that CPU power and memory will be issues. Still one can be hopeful that since the Linux Kernels are nearly the same version, the WebOS environment is the only portion that needs to be ported. It might be a bit sluggish, but the Angstrom installation has built-in over-clocking of the T/X processor so that hurtle could be overcome.

Having read this article about how to Dual Boot Linux on a Palm TX. I then downloaded the linux distribution described in the demonstration from the Reware Project And loaded it on a spare 2GB SD card as outlined. IT works as described, and it didn’t do any harm to my normal Palm OS installation. After trying the music app from this project and drilling down through the filesystem to find a complete Linux distro, I downloaded another system called Opie from here http://atrey.karlin.mff.cuni.cz/~miska/ and have now been throughly impressed with Linux running on my Palm.

The OPIE project is more or less a replacement PIM running over the Linux, and contains many Palm PIM equivalents, and although not as polished as the Palm applications, it makes for a very good beginning. From what I can know, the OPIE system boots off a Ångström Linux distribution of a Linux v2.6.23 kernel. And while the networking elements of the Palm T/X don’t appear to be operational, it’s still impressive.

If the forthcoming release of Nova Linux can take the edges off this OS, much in the vein of Android, Palm just might pull it out of the fire.

Giving Palm the benefit of the doubt I tried The Palm Software Store and attempted to download some ‘freeware’ apps from the Store directly into My Palm T/X. Well those that didn’t crash the T/X and reboot, failed to download at all. What a boneheaded move, create a store that doesn’t work, just prior to releasing your newNova OS!

I’m impressed, Opera Mini 4.2 works on my Palm T/X without crashing (so far) and the rendering of pages, while small, actually look like the real thing. Further, snapback to the previous page is very quick, and painless. I’ll be doing more testing, but this is a breakthrough as far a browsing on the Palm. I’ll have to try it on my S40 Symbian Phone (6300).

Every day I’m more and more impressed with my Palm T/X choice as Apple extends iPhone NDA. Apple is getting genuinely proprietary about their iPhone/iPod app store. They are making a mockery of their own developer community and that won’t last, seeing as there is now the Google G1 Android phone and it’s open source development roots.

I finally got fed up with the marginal, and with the Mac OS 10.5.5. update, broken iSync and Palm Desktop. So I went inter-web and bought and downloaded a copy of Missing Sync for Mac and after a bit more complicated install, and first sync. I think it might be a winner, and the Palm is even more integrated with my MacBook.

if this rumor is true that Palm’s Treo Pro in the wild, probably not fake. Then Palm has got to be the most foolish company in the world. Just when they are promising a new OS, a Linux cum Android like platform, they should announce yet another Windows based Phone, makes the company management come off all unfocused and wishy-washy in the vision department. How foolish can you be? Bring out the new OS, dammit, even in beta format. Get on with it Palm!

After hearing about how the iPhone can phone home and kill apps? I knew that my choice to purchase a Palm T/X was the correct one. But this is even more a vindication of my choice of the Nokia 6300 to act as the modem for both my MacBook and Palm T/X when Apple pulls posted iPhone modem app Apple won’t even allow you to use all the abilities of something You Own! just because they made it. DRM be dammed, being slaved to Apple is even worse. And just when Apple was beginning to increase marketshare, Job’s paranoia is making Apple into another Microsoft.